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March is Fraud Prevention Month across Canada. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada would like to encourage Canadians to be aware of all the ways criminals can obtain your personal information and steal your identity.

Once December rolls around, ‘tis the season many of us begin thinking of gifts for our family and friends. You might be considering gifting a fitness tracker, gaming console or even a digital assistant.

Humans have long been captivated by the idea of machines that mimic natural life. Examples of automata – mechanical devices that move as if by their own power – date back centuries, through the middle ages and into Ancient Greece. Of course, any semblance of “intelligence” in these machines was an illusion; they were designed by their creators to do specific tasks and move in particular ways, though at times these could be quite elaborate.

In a previous blog post we introduced the topic of cryptography, which is a key tool for keeping information secure and private. We used the example of a relatively simple symmetric encryption scheme where the encryption and decryption keys are the same.

The days are getting longer, winter is drawing to a close, and it’s beginning to feel like spring. As you make your spring cleaning “to-do” list, have you given any thought to how you could better protect your privacy?

Individuals and organizations have long had a need to protect secrets from prying eyes. One way in which we protect those secrets is through the use of cryptography, from the Greek kryptós, meaning "hidden” or “secret" and graphein, meaning "writing". Early forms of cryptography were used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

It was once the domain of doctors with bona fide concerns about their patients’ genetic predisposition for illness. Today, advances in technology have brought genetic testing to the fingertips of anybody with a few hundred dollars to spare.

With tax season approaching, many businesses are pulling together mass mailings to send out to customers. The information these mailings contain is likely pretty sensitive – names, addresses, social insurance numbers and financial details. You don’t want it falling into the wrong hands!